Senate Panel Questions NNPC’s Audited Statements Over N210trn Irregularities
The Senate Committee on Public Accounts has launched a probe into the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited over discrepancies amounting to N210 trillion discovered in the company’s audited financial statements.
Speaking during a session on Wednesday, the committee chairman, Senator Aliyu Wadada, said external auditors were engaged to support the inquiry due to the scale of the inconsistencies.
“We and NNPC and external auditors are here because of discrepancies that we have discovered from their audited financial statements, which is in the public domain already,” Wadada stated.
He emphasised that the committee would not entertain any documents that contradict the figures presented in the published audited accounts.
“So any document that contradicts what is contained in their audited financial statement is in abhorrence here. We have no question.
I mean, as far as we are concerned, it’s just a paper. We are not even looking at that. Because the issues are all on, about, and around their audited financial statement.”
Wadada revealed that N103 trillion was listed as accrued expenses and N107 trillion as receivables, bringing the total disputed amount to N210 trillion.
“They said reconciliation had not been done. So if reconciliation was not done, why did they sign off to the audited financial statement?” he queried.
NNPC’s Chief Financial Officer, Adedapo Segun, responded that the N107 trillion in question related to unreconciled joint venture (JV) cash calls.
“The N107 trillion, essentially, are made up of JV cash calls that have been requested by the JV operators and JV cash call payments that have been made by NNPC, which were yet to be reconciled because the governance procedure was not done at the time,” Segun explained.
The committee has given NNPC one week to provide detailed responses to its inquiries.
